412 NATURAL SCIENCE [December 



how this would help Professor Schiller ; for not even the most fervid 

 Lamarckian ever dreamed that the giraffe, when straining at the 

 leaves, was intelligently and purposefully directing the develop- 

 ment of muscles and bones and the rearrangement of his internal 

 and external anatomy generally. Thus the very modifications, on 

 which the whole value of his Lamarckian neck rested, were due to 

 blind mechanical action over which he exercised no intelligent con- 

 trol. Moreover, it does not appear that Professor Schiller had even 

 cleared up his notions of ' adaptations ' so far as to think of appeal- 

 ing to Lamarckism to support his contention that intelligent action 

 is responsible for many adaptations ; for in that section he does not 

 even mention Lamarck, though soon afterwards he remarks in pass- 

 ing (p. 872) that " it is practically certain that some Lamarckian in- 

 fluences must affect both the number and the character of the 

 variations " — the metaphysician, with typical assurance and hasti- 

 ness, thus dogmatically deciding a question over which our leading- 

 biologists, who alone are competent to speak authoritatively, are 

 hopelessly at variance. 



I pass over the curious passage in which Professor Schiller cites 

 the action of the ' general physical and chemical laws of nature ' as 

 barring variations in certain directions, and thus rendering impossible 

 the indefinite variation on which Darwin founded his arguments 

 (p. 872), 1 and I will not comment here upon his strange citation 

 of Bateson's work on Discontinuous Variation — which he fondly 

 supposes to constitute a stumbling-block to Natural Selection — for 

 I have already replied to that argument in the columns of Natural 

 Science (May, 1895) ; but we will pass at once to the concluding 

 section of Professor Schiller's article. This is really suggestive and 

 ingenious ; and, had the author excised the first ten pages of his 

 article and retained only the latter part, he would probably have 

 stood higher in the opinion of biologists. The pith of this latter 

 part of his argument may be stated in very few words. 



Darwin assumed that organisms vary indefinitely in 

 every direction, and that the evolution of species is due to the 

 action of natural selection in seizing upon and fixing a few among 

 these countless variations. Were this assumption a literal 

 statement of fact, any possibility of interpreting the universe 

 teleologically would be barred al> initio ; but, if variation be not 

 indefinite in every direction, but more frecruent in one direction than 

 in others, it may be purposive ; and thus the ground is cleared for 

 building up a new teleology. Now Darwin's assumption was not 

 a statement of fact, but a methodological assumption, exactly 

 analogous to the economic assumption of an ideal ' economic man,' 



1 The same sort of* objection might be brought against the first law of motion, and in- 

 either case is obviated by the insertion of the words ' tends to — ' 



